"The
Irish Echo, which is a newspaper here, is honoring 40 Irish Americans
under the age of 40, so I'm going to some sort of reception for that
today," he says. "I was nominated and it's an honor. I don't know. I guess I'll
shake some hands."

Paste: Why a live album now?Finn: Well, we had the footage for a long
time. When we did the Boys and Girls in America tour, we sort of felt like something
different was happening, so we had the label get us a film crew for
that tour and capture everything. In the end, it was a lot of
footage, so it took a while to get it where we wanted it.

It ended up
being a unique and interesting time for us as a band. I mean, we're
all in our 30s and we've been in a lot of bands with lesser success,
so when we started showing up at these sold-out shows and seeing the
community that had built up around it, it was a really exciting time.

Paste: Was there an
adjustment period to get used to having cameras around all the time?

Finn: I can't really remember. I
think we got pretty used to it. Obviously, looking at the footage,
we're pretty used to it. We got to be pretty friendly with the camera
guys. Especially by the time England happened, which was a little
ways after, so we already knew the guys from the American tour.

Paste: that told you Drive-By Truckers and The Hold Steadyare the
only bands that smile. It's an exaggerated point, obviously,
but a valid one, I think. What do you think this says about today's
rock 'n' roll that people look at it like that?

Finn: know where that starts, be it Kurt Cobain, I don't know who, but
people got that idea that rock 'n' roll isn't celebratory.

Paste: Do you think that preconception is starting to go away?

Finn: Well, I know that us and
the Truckers kind of feel the same way about music. There's always
gonna be new bands in genres, but I hope that people take something
from the way we try to make shows more celebratory.

Paste: Despite the fact
that the documentary is marketed with phrases like "the band is on the brink of collapse,"
I didn't get that vibe watching it. You guys are so clearly happy being
in a band—

Finn: —That may be overstated, but I
understand what you're saying. At that point, we still all had jobs,
I think. Going out was a labor of love. Now it's become somewhat more
professional. We still try to put everything into our shows. But one
thing about that tour was that we were still driving ourselves. When
you don't have a real driver, it's something that you're kind of
winging. We didn't have a tour manager either, so we were just kind
of showing up and playing in front of all these people, then loading
ourselves out and then going to a hotel or someone's house.

Paste: Fairly or
unfairly, you guys have been tagged as the quintessential bar band.
As your success continues growing, as the documentary makes clear that it is, are you worried about graduating to bigger
venues? That you won't have that dive-bar feel?

Finn: Yeah, it's certainly a
challenge, but I really embrace it. We've already dealt with it
somewhat. But we have to accept it to keep the band growing.

Paste: scheduled dates opening for Counting Crowsand Dave Matthews Band. Is
that kind of surreal to think about at all?

Finn: Well, no. The one thing we
haven't done much for anyone is open, so it should be pretty
interesting. We did do a show last summer with the Crows in a hockey
rink that was similiar to this kind of thing, and it worked really
well, we thought. Again, it's a part of growth and it's something
different.

Paste: Along with this
growth, do you notice your fanbase changing? Because another quote I
liked from the documentary was when one of your bandmates said that a
lot of your fanbase is fathers and their sons.

Finn: Yeah, it's pretty cool.
I've definitely seen it go more female lately, which is one of the
only ways I think we could've expanded. It seems like the numbers are
getting a lot more even now. It's also gotten quite a bit younger,
the audience.

Paste: Switching gears a
little bit, I recently read the Zero Boys essay you did for The Guardian. I actually only just discovered Vicious Circle this
year, and I thought the piece brought up a lot of great points about
punk rock and what it means now, but you also mentioned the recession
and it made me wonder how you thought it was affecting your live
shows.

Finn: To be honest, I don't know
that it has. We went out with the Truckers at the right time. It will
be interesting to see how it affects some of the festivals this
summer. I think that might be a place where we'll see some change.
But right now, some part of me thinks we'll be fine as far as our
shows, because we provide a place for people to escape. It's two
hours of escapism from the more stressful parts of their daily lives.
Gas was the big thing, and that's obviously gone in the right
direction. Last summer was really harsh with the gas.

Paste: You talk of a
"unified scene" in your songs and also in that Guardian piece in terms of how today's
punk-rock community really can't actually be one. One of the several factors
contributing to this, I think, is the way the Internet blows open the
idea of listening merely to one kind of music—

Finn: —Absolutely. And, the
Internet takes some of the romance and mystery away from it too, I
think. If you can buy any record off Amazon, if you can get your
hands on pretty much anything, you covet the little things you have a
little less. The punk rock of our day was based on poor distribution
and the records were more like artifacts. They were hand-touched from
somewhere else.

Paste: Whereas now, when
I discovered Zero Boys, I read a Wikipedia entry, but someone in the
late '70s might've had no idea who they are, much less a way of finding out.

Finn: Right, that's absolutely
true. It was much more of a select group of people.

Paste: You guys have a
lot of tour dates coming up, but have you have you found time to work on any new material
since Stay Positive?

Finn: We've been getting to the
stage where we can throw around ideas. Somewhere on the horizon we'll
get back into the studio. I'm not sure exactly when, but we're
starting to see what that'll be like.